hat is not capable of being established by
argument and ratiocination. Its ideas and suggestions are as follows:--

"Before any nation received from a neighbor nation dogmas already
invented; before one generation inherited the ideas of another, none of
these complicated systems had existence. The first men, the children of
nature, whose consciousness was anterior to experience, and who brought
no preconceived knowledge into the world with them, were born without
any idea of those articles of faith which are the result of learned
contention; of those religious rites which bad relation to arts and
practices not yet in existence; of those precepts which suppose the
passions already developed; of those laws which have reference to a
language and a social order hereafter to be produced; of that God, whose
attributes are abstractions of the knowledge of nature, and the idea of
whose conduct is suggested by the experience of a despotic government;
in fine, of that soul and those spiritual existences which are said not
to be the object of the senses, but which, however, we must forever have
remained unacquainted with, if our senses had not introduced them to
us. Previously to arriving at these notions, an immense catalogue of
existing facts must have been observed. Man, originally savage, must
have learned from repeated trials the use of his organs. Successive
generations must have invented and refined upon the means of
subsistence; and the understanding, at liberty to disengage itself from
the wants of nature, must have risen to the complicated art of comparing
ideas, digesting reasonings, and seizing upon abstract similitudes.

"It was not till after having surmounted those obstacles, and run a long
career in the night of history, that man, reflecting on his state, began
to perceive his subjection to forces superior to his own and independent
of his will. The sun gave him light and warmth; fire burned, thunder
terrified, the winds buffeted, water overwhelmed him; all the various
natural existences acted upon him in a manner not to be resisted. For a
long time an automaton, he remained passive, without inquiring into the
cause of this action; but the very moment he was desirous of accounting
to himself for it, astonishment seized his mind; and passing from the
surprise of a first thought to the reverie of curiosity, he formed a
chain of reasoning.

"At first, considering only the action of the elements upon him, he
inferred